Forage crops, such as legumes and grasses, are harvested by cutting the crop from the field, allowing the severed crop to dry and baling the dried crop into formed packages for subsequent handling. These packages of forage crop can vary widely in size from small rectangular bales that can be manipulated manually by a human to large round or rectangular bales that require mechanization to handle after being formed. Since these larger bales of forage crop can weigh 1500 pounds or more, machinery is required to pick these bales up from the field, transport them, process them and feed them to animals.
Bales of forage crop prepared at the correct moisture content can be wrapped in plastic to prevent the passage of oxygen-laden air into the bale to allow the forage material to ferment and create silage. A machine for spiral wrapping round bales of forage crop into a long continuous tube of baled forage material can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,793,124, granted on Dec. 27, 1988, to David W. Anderson. The apparatus in U.S. Pat. No. 4,793,124 provides a wrapping mechanism that is associated with a circular hoop that wraps a strip of plastic around the round bales of forage crop fed through the circular hoop to create a long tube-like structure comprised of a series of round bales placed end to end and wrapped in plastic.
Tractors have been utilized to bring round bales of forage crop from the field to the barn for storage or further processing. In some instances, the tractors would be provided with a lift mechanism that would be operable to engage one round bale at a time to move the round bale from the field to a storage area or a processing area. Ultimately, larger transporters were developed to make the movement of the round bales from the field be more efficient. One such large round bale transporter is found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,019,644, granted to Shaun A. Seymour on Apr. 26, 1977, in which the transporter is a pair of endless chain conveyors mounted on a wheeled frame to pick up round bales at a forward end and convey the bales toward the rear. When filled, the Seymour transporter had a line of round bales supported on the apparatus to be carried from the field to a remote location. The mechanism for elevating the round bales onto the transporter is located in line with the chain conveyors.
Another transporter apparatus can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,329,102, issued on May 11, 1982, to John H. Gray. The Gray transporter is similar to the Seymour transporter in that the round bales are engaged at the forward end of the machine and conveyed rearwardly to be transported in a linear configuration. The Gray transporter, however, is constructed with an offset bale pick-up mechanism that engages round bales to the side of the transporter and elevates them onto the transporter by pivoting the pick-up mechanism to move the bale from the ground onto the transporter. U.S. Pat. No. 5,071,304, issued to Vern L. Godfrey on Dec. 10, 1991, carries the collected round bales in a linear orientation above the surface of the ground, and picks up the bales by hydraulically lowering the entire transporter over the round bale before engaging and lifting the bale.
A two row transporter for round bales is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,700,124, granted on Dec. 23, 1997, to Charles Dufraisse. In this transporter, round bales are engaged by a pick-up mechanism located offset to the side of the transporter frame so that the pick-up mechanism will pivot to elevate a round bale from the ground onto the frame of the transporter where a pusher moves the round bales rearwardly until the first row of round bales is formed. A second pusher apparatus is then operated to move the entire row of round bales from the first position to a transversely spaced second position. The first row of round bales is then filled again to provide a two row transporter configuration for transport from the field to a remote location. This particular transporter has been coupled commercially with the spiral round bale wrapper apparatus disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,793,124 with the first row of bales being fed through the circular hoop followed by the second row after being moved back onto the first row position.
In this commercial configuration, the transporter is powered by the tractor that provides motive and operative power to the transporter, but the wrapper mechanism is powered by its own on-board engine to operate independently of the transporter and the tractor. However, in the specification of U.S. Pat. No. 5,700,124, an automatic coupling device is suggested as being available to hydraulically couple the wrapper apparatus to the hydraulic system of the tractor connected to the transporter. Certainly, a manual connection of hydraulic hoses from the tractor to the wrapper apparatus is possible, although such manual operation requires the operator of the tractor to dismount from the tractor and manually connect the hydraulic hoses to the connecting ports of the wrapper apparatus.
It would be desirable to provide a large bale transporter apparatus that would be operable to engage both large round bales and large rectangular bales of forage crop to pick the bales up from the field after being baled and transport them to a remote location.
It would also be desirable to provide a transporter apparatus that would be operable to be coupled to a wrapping machine to cause the bales being transported to be spiral wrapped with a plastic strip without requiring the operator to dismount from the tractor to cause the wrapping machine to be operatively powered.
It would further be desirable to provide a transporter apparatus that would be operable to retrieve a line of spiral-wrapped bales from a remote location for transport therefrom.